


White Golden Pearls

by MooseFeels



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Beauty and the Beast AU, PTSD, PTSDean, Wingfic, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-21 01:05:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 5,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseFeels/pseuds/MooseFeels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beauty and The Beast AU: Castiel wants out so bad he can't stand it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

It aches in the space without them, his back and body naked and incomplete in their absence.  
He is marked, he is wrong, he is uncomfortable and he is sick.  
The light tries to force its way through the window, to drag its way across his brow, and he growls at it and slams the curtains shut. He tries to, at least, but he breaks the pane of glass in the process. He howls his frustration.  
He is twisted. He is freakish.  
He’s a monster.  
Dean is broken  and it is no one’s fault but his own.  
  
Castiel wakes up in the morning to the sunlight and the birdsong, everything bright and clear and joyful. Everything is happy to be alive in the morning, even him. Even despite being here, still, he is happy in the morning.  
He throws himself out of bed and washes his face and struggles into his shirt and feeds the chickens and washes the dishes from dinner and grabs a hunk of bread from yesterday and then he runs out into the feild and he stretches his wings and flies as high and far as he dares.  
The village is small below him.  
He remembers the first time he did this, like all of them do, he’s sure. He remembers looking down and thinking that home was so small for the first time. And now it is all he can think.  
He lands a little ways outside of town, a brief walk in is all, and he straightens his wings and feathers before heading in to the baker and bookseller.  
They all know him, they’ve all come to antcipate what he wants and his orders, and it’s maddening, and as he takes the book he’s read six times now (which is probably four less than all of the other ones) he feels like he could scream.  
Castiel hungers for something new, something different, something he doesn’t know, and it is driving him insane. By the time he is done with the day and the candle runs out, he is so tired and so impaitient and so ready to go that he nearly flies away, away, away and out into the world.  
And then his father cries out in his sleep  and Castiel puts that thought away.  
  
Castiel is running through the market, hurried and fast when he runs into him.  
He’s all blonde hair and sleazy smile and brilliant white wings. All debonair where Castiel lacks grace. All msucle and perfection and uncomforting hunger.  
“Why, Castiel,” he leers. “How pleasant to see you.”  
Castiel smiles tightly in a way that is pleasant but not too friendly. “Hello, Lucifer,” he greets back as he picks himself up from the ground. The dirt dusts over his clothes and settles between his feathers. He looks ridiculous, he’s sure. More so than usual.  
The people in the village think he’s a fool, he’s sure.  
“Where are you headed with all these books?” He asks. “One would think your father would be entertainment enough.”  
“Don’t talk about my father that way,” Castiel bites. “He’s brilliant, still. Just troubled.”  
Lucifer smiles patronizingly and insinuates himself deep into Castiel’s personal space. “Of course he is, pet. And the trouble would be easier with an extra set of hands around, hmm?” His wings try to fold over him and close the space between them, but Castiel is too fast and ducks out of them.  
“Really,” he says, ingratiant, polite, diplomatic. “I can manage. And I should really be getting home.”  
He jogs off before taking altitude, the flight home brisk and refreshing. Castiel doesn’t like Lucifer, but he’ll tolerate him.  
He tolerates a lot of things.  
He lands just down the path to the door and he holds his breath.  
Some days are good. Some days are bad.  
Some days, he is elbow deep in a book or some inscrutable machine.  
Some days he is curled, twitching on the floor, nonsense flowing from his lips.  
There is something that seizes Castiel’s father, and it is terrible. Something the preists alternately praise as prophecy and damn as possession. Something that makes him sing unfamiliar names and terrifying actions.  
Castiel pushes the door open, and today is a good day.  
Chuck, his father, sits at the table with a thick tome before him and a cup of coffee at his side. He looks up, alert, when Castiel comes through the door and smiles warmly.  
“Good afternoon,” he greets.  
And Castiel smiles and it’s almost normal.  They talk, friendly and wandering for a while as Castiel makes dinner, and then they eat, and then they fall asleep.  
Castiel sleeps shrouded in his wings until the slamming of the door wakes him.  
He jerks up from his bed and exits his small room. The door is ajar, letting cold air into the house. He immediately goes to his father’s bedroom.  
The bed is empty.  
He leaves the door open as he flies out into the night with no idea where his father might be and only a prayer to sustain him.  
There is only a vague idea where his father might have gone, and he scans the forest not far from his house for any kind of signs of falling.  
And then he sees the strip of torn branches and earth where someone fell. Castiel comes closer to the ground, and there are muddy footprints and torn branches leading deeper and deeper in.  
He flies, panicked, consumed with worry, as far as he can before he lands and runs as fast as he can, following, following, desperate, desperate desperate.  
The foot prints end at a great iron gate before a huge, ruined castle.  
And Castiel feels his stomach rise in his throat as he parts the gate and heads inside.


	2. Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter: Plot

The plants are dead all around him and the winter air is stale. The castle is a ruin, glass windows knocked out in jagged shards and masonry overtaken by moss and dead ivy. Everything is very very still and very very quiet.  
He looks at the step through the entryway and there are two clear footprints in the dust.   
Castiel grits his jaw and closes his eyes. His heartbeat quickens and he feels sick. God only knows what’s inside, beyond the rotted wooden door and the dirt and dust. His father could be fine, his father could be lucid. His father could be trapped under a fallen rock or torn apart by wolves.

  
The door creaks open as he walks in, his worn shoes scraping against the filthy stone.   
Everything inside is a wreck, rotting and destroyed. It smells like mold and wet fabric and destroyed wood. There is no warmth, only the damp and the cold and the wind that shrieks through the wrecked windows.   
Castiel walks by an empty hearth with the remains of a chair placed before it. An empty dining hall. A wounded study.  
He thinks that perhaps this is a fluke, that his father is not here after all when he notices a single lit candle.  
The taper is long and thin and the flame is fresh. He takes the candelabra it rests alone in, and then he hears something down the hall.  
Something like a low voice.  
He practically runs down the hall and up the stone stairs, desperate for his father and then-  
Chuck is cowered on the floor, hidden beneath his brown-sparrow small wings. He is talking, murmuring, muttering constantly. He is whispering into the air.   
Castiel dashes forward into the pool of moonlight his father is lying in and tries to pull him up, tries to look him in the eye. “Father,” he says, “Father can you hear me? Are you in there?”  
Chuck looks at his son with distant eyes, absent and terrifying. Slowly he focuses, and when he registers that Castiel is there a look of pure horror comes over him .  
“He’s coming,” he says. “Run, please, run. Run, Castiel, run, he’s coming.”  
Castiel tries to pull his father up from the ground. “Come on,” he says, and he tries to sound soothing and reasonable. Tries to be calm. “Let’s get you home.”  
He collapses under the weight of his tired wings and a broken ankle. His litany continues. “Castiel, please, just leave me. Just leave me, he’s coming.”  
And then he feels a cold touch in the darkness, something rouch and cold and wet and awful and he hears a low voice growl, “What are you doing on my property?”  
And he shuts his eyes and grips his father as tightly as he can bear and he whispers, “Please.”  
“What,” the voice continues, “Are you doing on my property?” The volume is higher and something on the air shakes.  
“Please,” Castiel continues. “Please, my father is ill. He walked out in the night and he didn’t know. Please, we’ll just-“  
“ _Intruders!_ ” The voice thunders, and Castiel feels the coldness grasp against him, scrabbling and tight and violent and terrible, terrifying, awful, painful, and he sees his father’s face twist under the same pain.

“Come to stare?” The voice cries. “Come to look at the freak?”  
“Please!” Castiel shouts. “Please! Don’t hurt him! I’ll do anything, anything, just don’t hurt him, let him go!”

He feels the horrifying grip pull him in a little tighter and the thunder of the voice calms and pulls in tight and close. “Anything”?” It whispers.

“Please, just let him go. Let him get home safe. Please.”

“You stay,” it replies, and it no longer growls or shouts. It sounds so _normal._ “He’ll go back to the village. He’ll get there safe. You stay.”

The timbre changes again, and once more seems… _monstrous._

“You stay forever.”

“Please,” his father begs. “Please, take me. Take me, I’ve not long. Let him go, he’s going to do so much, please, me instead.”

“No,” Castiel says to his father, firm. “No, you go. I’ll be okay,” and his voice cracks around it. “I’ll be okay, Father.”

He lets go, and his father is swept away suddenly, sharply through the ruin.

Castiel holds onto the phantom of his father’s touch on him for as long as he can before he turns.

And there’s nothing behind him but darkness.

He falls down onto the floor, seized with shock.

“I didn’t even,” he whispers, “I didn’t even get to say goodbye.” He feels hollow.

There is a tense silence. “I’m sorry,” is the answer, and once more the voice is inmonstrous.

“Who _are_ you?” Castiel asks, pained.

“No one,” is the answer, and the gentleness flies out once more into venom. “A freak in a ruin.”

The air is cold around him, but the darkness parts strangely and another hall is revealed to him.   
“A bedroom,” they say. “A bedroom is at the end of the hall. You might want to sleep there.”

Castiel nods dumbly.

_Forever_ , rings through the back of his mind.

He’s trapped, not even in the village. He’s trapped in a ruin, _forever._


	3. Part Three

He wakes up hours and ours later on the cold stone floor, a shard of cold sunlight striking through the spaces between the stones. He could begin to feel the start of winter in the mid-autumn air, and it set an ache in his bones and joints and wings.

In his rush, he had not put on shoes last night. _I won't need them again_ , he thought, mournfully. Here, forever.

He pulled himself up from the floor and stretched, groaning.

"I told you," called the voice. "You would have been more comfortable in the bedroom."

"Did you stay here?" Castiel asked. "All night, did you stay here?"

"I...I don't sleep," was the answer. "I'm sorry."

"As long as I'm staying here," Castiel continued, "I should probably know your name."

There was a long, painful pause. "Dean," was the reply. "I'm Dean."

Castiel shivered and wrapped his wings around himself against the chill air. "I'm Castiel. Could you step out of the shadows?" He asked. "Could I see you?"

"No," Dean replied, his voice tight and loud. Commanding. "No, don't look at me."

Castiel flinched at the suddenness.

"I'm sorry," Dean continued. "I'm sorry, I'm...it's been awhile. Um, there should be...down the hall, in the bedroom, there should be something you can...you must be cold."

Castiel nodded.

Inexplicably, he felt like he was alone again in the cold and ruined room.

He felt numb.

He felt empty.

He looked down the hallway he had been directed toward and walked slowly down it.

Everything looked cold and grey and tight in the early light, and he nearly missed the large wooden door set flush against the stone. He opened it slowly and eased inside.

The bedroom was so different from the rest of the castle. Where the rest of the furniture had been wrecked, everything was untouched in here, draped heavily in dust. The air was stale, as if the room hadn't been opened in years. The bed was long and plush, a a high wardrobe sat against a wall. There was a desk covered in books and yellowing paper.

Castiel threw himself upon the bed, tossing a cloud of dust into the air, and he wept. He wept, he wept, he wept.

 


	4. Part Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something's Missing

His stomach growled when the sun came back down, and he sat up and stretched his wings out behind himself. His joints cracked. He wiped the dust and the salt from his face. Ran his hands through his hair. 

Castiel got off the bed and peered inside the wardrobe. Hanging inside were multiple set of clothes, all for someone clearly much, much larger than he. He pulled a shirt down and shrugged into it. It settled warmly over his shoulders, and he let his wings shoot out from the bottom. 

Hanging on the inside of the door was a mirror, tarnished with age. 

Castiel looked at himself in it curiously. His dark hair was sleep mussed, and his blue eyes were ringed heavily from exhaustion and crying. 

His stomach rumbled again, reminding him sharply of why he had pulled himself out of the bed. 

He stepped back out into the hallway to look for a kitchen. 

He walked back towards the door outside, towards the great dining hall, and not too far from it were the great ovens and stoves that indicated what was once a kitchen. It was haunted by an emptiness and a stale smell that indicated that nothing that was food had been here for a long, long time. 

Castiel bit his lip. Forever might come faster if he starved. 

The sound of a throat clearing came from a grouping of shadows. "I'll see about getting some food here for you," Dean announced. "I'm sorry."

"You don't eat either," Castiel said, slowly. "You don't sleep and you don't eat." He stepped near Dean's voice, towards that patch of shadow. "Who _are_ you?"

From where he was, he could catch a glimpse of green-ness, a glint of eyes in the light. 

"Please don't," he asked, his deep voice cracking slightly. "Don't look. I'm...please don't."

Castiel pressed a little closer into the shadow, and he began to gather the idea of a shape. Taller than he was, bulkier frame. Deferential posture.

No wings. 

Castiel backed away from the shadow, and barely contained a gasp. 

"I'm sorry," he stumbled. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry I didn't mean-"

There was a crackling on the air and the sound of crockery smashing. Castiel turned to look as a great, cast-iron pot cracked in two and fell to floor.

When he turned back, Dean was gone. 

 

 


	5. Part Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First Contact

Castiel held on firmly to the stone-topped tables, shocked. He couldn't believe what he'd seen, couldn't believe what had happened, what might have happened. What he saw. Or rather, what he didn't see.

When he was a boy, there had been a man in the village, a man who didn't leave his house. There had been a war, and he'd gone to fight when he was a young man. He'd come back old and scarred, though. Old and scarred and missing a wing.

Castiel had been young enough that he could stare without blame as the man dazedly tried to become airborne. Single wing flopping uselessly, toes barely brushing the grass in sloppy circles hardly three or four inches off the ground.

The man had disappeared weeks later. An ugly death that was whispered behind the backs of the children. Fallen from a tree in one last desperate attempt to touch the sky. A broken neck. 

Castiel found himself hyperventilating from the shock of it, the incredible mutilation. He shut his eyes and tried to breathe.

He couldn't imagine the pain.

He couldn't stop hyperventilating, and soon white stars interrupted the black space behind his eyelids.

He couldn't imagine the loss, and he couldn't imagine what that would drive someone to.

He opened his eyes just long enough to feel his vision become a long grey tunnel, and feel the hard stone slip out of his fingers.

Castiel didn't feel himself hit the floor, however. Felt something else, something like arms, gather under and over him to prevent him from falling. Something like a soft voice whisper, "Oh, Christ, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I didn't mean, I knew this would happen."

And he felt body warmth and he smelled gunpowder and sweat.

When he came back to, he was back in the bed. The dust had been shaken from the blankets and sheets, and he was tucked gently in. He rose slowly, hindered by his wings still tucked into the overbig shirt. He had forgotten he was wearing it. It smelled faintly of the security that had kept him from falling.

It smelled faintly, Castiel knew, of Dean.

He climbed out of bed, hands shaking and legs unsteady. He felt slightly more calm now, but the darkness of wound- the absence- left him shaken still. 

Castiel opened the door to his bedroom, and before him sat a loaf of bread a couple of apples. There was a note under an apple, which read in shaky, unused script-

 _I'm sorry. I didn't want you to see. I'm sorry._


	6. Part Six

Castiel took the food from where it sat and placed it on the old, dusty desk. He grabbed an apple and stepped from the cool bedroom into the colder hallway.

His breath hung on the air like puffs of heavy, indoor fog. His toes curled under his feet against the fridgid stone floor.

He eventually made it back to the large room where he'd found his father. Dust motes hung in the early morning sunlight. From the other side of the room, Castiel spotted a hall he'd not gone down yet. He took a heavy bite from his apple and headed down the hall.

Much like the hall his room was in, there were no windows, and all was dark. His eyes eventually adjusted, though, and while he did squint, he could make out what was and was not stone.

He eventually came to another doorway, much like the one leading to the room he slept in. He placed his hand flat against it, and it rocked silently open.

There was a bedroom similiar to the other one, but instead of immaculate furnishings, this one was a wreck. There was no dust however, and the light flowed uninterrupted through the window. 

The bed sagged onto the floor, the rails beneath splintered and snapped and buried in the suffocating coccoon of matress and blanket was a _Man._

 _  
_Skin that had been tanned once, now paled and scattered with freckles. Dark blonde hair, short but grown out of a haircut. A tattoo Castiel did not quite recognize peaking out over the edge of the blanket- a five pointed star inside of a sun.

And no wings.

Castiel felt his heart skip and the sight of the deformation, but he maintained his calm this time. Pushing down panic, he looked at Dean for the first time. 

Beautiful, in a tragic kind of way. His face was open and innocent in his rest, and Castiel was puzzled by finding him this way, recalling that he'd told him he neither slept nor ate. His fingers itched with a foreign desire to touch him. 

He turned over in his sleep, away from Castiel, and he caught a sight of two gigantic scars running down his back. 

At that Castiel had to leave the room, leave and run down the hall back into his own room and shut the door and force the air back into his lungs and hold back the screams. 

 

When Dean woke up hours later, he nearly slid on the half-eaten apple on the floor by his bed. 


	7. Part Seven

Dean looked down at the apple. The skin was bright red, a sharp crimson color almost like the color of blood as it seeps out of a wound.

He shook the thought of that from his head and picked it up, quizzical. And then he remembered. He remembered roaming through the grounds and finding them- the last of the autumn apples in his orchard. He remembered leaving them with the rough, dark bread he had baked ineptly at the door of the man he had imprisoned here.

He threw the apple hard against the wooden frame of the mirror, the glass cracked out long ago.

God he was so dumb. He should have just...he should have just let them both go, never spoken, never let himself pop up. Never should have lost his temper

But the older man- the small one who seemed to be absent in space, the one who had been the father- he had reached out with trembeling hands. Had nearly touched him, and said so surely that it must have been fact, "Cursed."

And no one could ever know.

He lay back on his bed and-

_They were coming, all of them. Unending and huge and unstoppable and terrifying and Sammy was there, was right there beside him, and they locked hands and they started to take and-_

  
Dean yanked himself from the memory and got up and decided that perhaps he should talk to the man who lived in the house.

 

* * *

 

There was a knock on his door that made Castiel's heart skip a beat.

"Who is it?" He called, feeling stupid. He damn well knew who it was.

"It's um, it's Dean," was the reply. "Listen, I'm-"

"I'm sorry," Castiel interrupted. "I'm sorry I was looking around I was just seeing what was here and I-"

"I'm sorry I lost my temper. I'm sorry you had to...find out-"

Castiel opened the door and Dean stood there, in his doorway. Deformed.

Honest.

_Small._

"That wasn't okay," Castiel said. "This isn't okay. Trapping me here? Separating me from my support structures? The shouting? This," he gestured around the building, "This isn't okay. This isn't how you make friends."

Dean bit his lip and closed his eyes and nodded, slowly. "I know."

"That's...for the love of God, that's abuse!" He shouted, and Dean flinched again.

"I know," he answered. "I know. I've...I haven't talked to anyone since the war. I'm...it's...that's not an excuse. What I did...was bad.  I'm poorly socialized. I'm sorry."

Castiel cocked his head in curiosity. "The war? How old are you? You can't be that much older than I am."

And Dean winced, hard.  "Foreign. A ways off, couple days hard ride from here. Had to fight; It was a family obligation."

"Really?" He answered, surprised. "I thought I would hear about something like that." Castiel looked Dean in the eye, unable to look anywhere ask if he were to ask the question that really meant anything.

"Is that where you lost them?"

Dean's hand tightened into a fist, skin turning white where it was stretched over his knuckles. "Yes," he answered.

"I'm sorry," Castiel said. "I'm sorry I stare."

Dean shrugged. "Everyone stares. That's okay though, I mean, it's better if I'm inside. I mean, I don't," he shut his eyes and took a long, breath. "I remember sometimes."

And Castiel thought of the man who had hung himself, when he was a boy. He thought of his terrible silence. He thought of his attempts to fly.

He thought of him _remembering._

And he thought of Dean, wingless, stepping out onto the air.

Castiel was paralyzed in that moment by the possibility of so many things and by the probability of saying the wrong thing. Feels the incorrect ones trying to eat him up from the inside.

"Do you want to remember?" He finally asks.

 

 

 

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

The question hangs on the air, thick and heavy.

Dean closes his eyes and frowns. "No," he answered. "But I have to. I need to."

"Do you have any shoes?" Castiel asks. "I'd like to see the grounds."

Dean's eyes open and he looks at Castiel quizzically. "Yeah," he answers. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather....?" He motions to Castiel's wings. "I mean, you can go." He looks embarrassed. "It doesn't make sense for...you don't have to stay. I won't make you stay. I'm sorry."

Castiel shakes his head. "No, I'd like to walk. Do you have any shoes; I left my house without them."

* * *

The shoes are clearly many sizes too big for Castiel's feet, but they were Sammy's and Sam was always a big guy. Bigger than Dean, who would make Castiel look slight if he had his wings. Castiel compensates by putting on a couple extra pair of socks, and he shrugs into another jacket.

He keeps his wings tucked under the layers, and if it weren't for the extra bulk of it on his back, he would look almost like Dean- almost as messed up.

They walk through the castle and out of the door and the dead leaves crunch underfoot.

"What is this place?" Castiel asks.

"Old homestead," Dean replies. "I grew up here, me and my brother after Mom died and Dad went to persue," he waves his hand nebulously through the air, "revenge. Just us and our Uncle."

"What about the servants?" Castiel asks.

Dean raises an eyebrow.

"The people who maintained the castle. Your cooks and maids and stablemen. You can't tell me you didn't talk to _any_ of them," Castiel continues.

Dean has the grace to look embarrassed.

Castiel rolls his eyes.

"You have a brother?" He asks.

Dean nods. They're heading out of what was once manicured garden and into the wood. The trees are dark grey with rains, and the leaves are flat and sticky where they fall onto them and twine into their hair. "Yeah," he answers. "Four years younger than me. Sam. He was...brilliant. He was the best part of the family."

Dean looks ahead, careful to avoid eye contact. "He heard about what was happening, and he wanted in. Wanted to go and prove his own...whatever. And I went with him." He inhales, and the autumn air is just cold enough that burns a little inside his throat, a good kind of burn. "It wasn't what he had thought it would be. We didn't anticipate...there were things out there, in the forest. We got seperated from the rest and we were running and running and kept running and they caught up to us."

The wind whips around Castiel in an unfamiliar shape. He doesn'tt walk like he had when he was kid. He'd gotten old enough to fly, and he'd been airborn. He'd forgotten what the stretch of a calf muscle or the way an ankle creaked felt like.

"And then everything around us was wrong. And when I woke up, it was just me, in the forest, a freak."

"How long have you been here?" Castiel asks.

Dean shrugs. "I don't know. I stopped keeping track of it."

"You told me you don't sleep or eat- is that true?"

Dean shrugs agin. "I definitely don't eat. Usually don't sleep. I don't like to, at any rate." He cleared his throat, the hollow cold air feeling sharp in him. "It's worse, sometimes, being able to remember what it feels like to be...all of me. I miss the sky."

"How'd you get back?" Castiel asks.

Dean smiles, and the way the thing tugs across his face is broken and strange. "I walked," he says, very softly. "One foot in front of the other, all the way home."

* * *

 

Chuck bursts into the public house with his face flushed, gasping.

"He has him," he shouts. "He has him, the monster has him."

No one puts down their mugs, no one spares him a glance. 

Chuck is shaking, his hands rattling emptily through space. "Please," he begs. "My son, the monster, in the woods- the ruins- it has my son, it has my son. It has Castiel."

Lucifer sets down his mug and turns in his chair. Not speaking, just listening. It's amazing the things people just say sometimes. 

"It's inside- it doesn't know but it's inside and it has Castiel. It's in the woods, in the woods," he insists, voice straining to the top of his lungs. He's beginning that panicked tone that usually indicates Castiel won't be long. But it's funny, he doesn't show. There's no rustle of his dark wings, no low song of his voice.

"Chuck," Lucifer says, loosing his wings a bit, trying to look friendly, "why don't you come over here and tell me about this monster of yours."

It's precious the way Chuck's little brown sparrow wings twitch. "The woods- in the woods, there are ruins. The big house, before the war. It was before your time, you wouldn't and the monster, there's a monster. They're inside, they're _inside_ and they have Castiel. They have my only son."

Lucifer smiles a little. "Shh," he soothes, and he pets a hand down Chuck's back. His wings flutter slightly in response. He looks worn out. "Shhh, it's alright." He glances over his shoulder to catch the eye of Azazel, his own right hand. "How about you just cool down, alright?"

Azazel grabs one side, Lucifer grabs the other, and it's maybe ten steps to the door to dump Chuck out of the pub and back into the snow. 

Lucifer is sure he's the only one who hears Chuck cry into the night, "Please! Will no one help me?"

He's also sure, hours later, that he's the only one who flies off towards the woods, looking for something that could be called a ruin or something that could be called a castle. 

Castiel is _his_.


End file.
